<p>First off, know thy percentiles.</p>
<p>151ish is the median.
157 is about the 70-75th percentile.
(See how the scores are really compressed around the 150 range? About half of LSAT takers will score between 143 and 157.)
160 is about the 83rd percentile.
169-170 is the 98th percentile.
171 starts the 99th percentile, which spans 171 to 180.</p>
<p>Basically, there is a bell curve - and a LOT of the scores are in a narrow range. Generally, with 101 questions, you can see how each point represents one or two additional correct answers. This tells you something else: you benefit tremendously from aswreing a few more questions correctly. For example, the difference between a 160 (which is about the median for tier 2 schools) and a 170 (the median for some top 10 schools) is about 10 questions. </p>
<p>Now, the quality of the scores depends on where you want to go. A 160 is quite a solid score - that, by itself, will only keep you out of HYS and maybe a few others. (Of course, so much of this depends on your undergrad, your GPA, your major, etc - but there are very few schools which would refuse to accept someone with a 160.) Anything 170 and above puts you in the running for pretty much any school in the country - you're in the game. You might be in with a bleacher seat at Yale's admissions, but you're in the game.</p>
<p>As the arguments section is about half the test, I would normally recommend that people focus on improving in that area. Given that you are weak in that area, I would recommend that even more so. In some ways, you are in good shape if you only have to improve on one section.</p>
<p>Consider:
Did you time yourself? Did you absolutely stick to 35 minutes per section? Did you just circle the answers or actually fill them in? Did you do the test all at once or did you take breaks? Did you take an actual, previously administered LSAT or one that was devised by test companies? (Sometimes, the latter are harder - but studying the "wrong" material is not, IMO, as helpful for taking the actual LSAT.)</p>
<p>Now, some advice. The arguments section is the one that I found to be the easiest, once I figured it out. Go over your answers. Figure out which ones you did correctly, and, more importantly, which ones you got wrong. Figure out what the correct answers are and WHY. I know that some people have trouble with that section because they give answers that could be correct. Consider one of those problems where they give you a brief fact pattern about kids who play music, kids who are in the marching band, and kids who are in the jazz band. Now, of the five answers, three of them are going to be plainly wrong (once you work through the problem). Of the two remaining answers, often, one of them is correct in certain, limited circumstances, and the other is correct in more circumstances. The latter answer is correct. As is true of the entire LSAT, you are choosing the best answer. Choose the answer that is applicable in almost all circumstances, not the answer which is correct in limited circumstances. Yes, it can be confusing - because both are arguably correct. So a lot of LSAT studying is figuring out what the test-makers think is the "more correct" answer. Likewise, in the questions that ask you what you can properly infer from the facts, the answer is the one that re-states the facts, not the ones that draw conclusions (either "correct" as most people would consider them, or incorrect) from the facts.</p>